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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Accidental President.

Summarized.





'Yes, our boss made "errors and mistakes" in writing his doctoral dissertation, said a faculty committee at Southern Illinois University. Yes, there were "many instances" in which "the words of others are present in a continuous flow" (although that doesn't constitute plagiarism).

But those "incorrect practices" -- 25 of them in a 110-page paper -- ought to be allowed to be fixed and SIU President Glenn Poshard should be able complete a new dissertation, the panel said. And the old document should be removed from the SIU Library and replaced with the "corrected" version.

In other words, Poshard gets a big, fat do-over; the president of the university is given a break from a group with an obvious conflict of interest that no one else would get. And Southern Illinois University's already diminished academic reputation takes another hit.

Who but the president of the university, a politically connected southern Illinois native, could get such a deal from a committee of faculty whose financial livelihood depends in part on how much money Poshard can schmooze from the Springfield power brokers who are his pals?'



---daily herald---